


Home

by SomeonetheElusiveFangirl



Series: Voltron Headcanons [2]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: (or is he........), All About Family, Angst, Klance if you squint, Langst, M/M, Memory Loss, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, and lonely, lance is back on earth, lance is confused, mild descriptions, not a lot but still there, surprise surprise there's fluff, things may not be as they seem...
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-05
Updated: 2019-02-16
Packaged: 2019-05-18 09:28:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,498
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14850170
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SomeonetheElusiveFangirl/pseuds/SomeonetheElusiveFangirl
Summary: Lance has returned to Earth, yet things don't go as well as he'd imagined as his time in space haunts him. He should be happy to be out of the war and back with his family, but he can't shake the feeling of wrongness that weighs down on him...





	1. Home Sweet Home?

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, I've re-written another headcanon!  
> I can't give away the prompt as that would spoil the ending!  
> I somehow doubled its length in editing and I owe an enormous thanks to the wonderful [arifail](https://archiveofourown.org/users/arifail/pseuds/arifail) ([tumblr](https://arifail.tumblr.com/)) for beta-reading and making sure my mess of words actually made sense!

Lance is back home.

There’s a teary reunion in the middle of the porch as he’s welcomed back by many tight embraces which take a good half hour to escape from and all in all, it feels like a dream to be back in their arms.

Once inside, his family wastes no time in asking him about where he disappeared to, only to scoff as he tells them the truth. They assume he ran off with his friends, the Garrison apparently unable to explain their absence, for which he receives a harsh scolding from his mother. It doesn’t last long and soon she’s fussing over him again, stating they should celebrate his return from wherever he'd been.

After many hours of catching up and unrelenting teasing from his older siblings, the house seems to finally calm down and it’s as if Lance had never left. Everything is just as he remembered and the aching familiarity immediately puts him at ease, loosening a tightness he hadn’t noticed in the set of his shoulders.

Lance should’ve known things were going too well.

* * *

He doesn’t take much notice of it at first. He’d sometimes wake up, heading downstairs to the kitchen in a sleepy daze, asking Hunk what was for breakfast, only to find his mum frowning at him in concern before she resumed preparing a basket of crispy tostadas. No sloppy, neon-coloured space goo in sight. Still, Lance had only just returned to Earth, he knew it would take time to adjust. Besides, he’d known Hunk back at the Garrison, so he had obviously just grown accustomed to his constant company.

There were similar occasions where he’d catch himself almost calling out to the others, or trying to reach out to Blue, but he quickly shook it off. It wasn’t too bad. Sure, the realisation would send a pang through him each time, but he’d get over it. It was the other things he was more concerned about.

Nightmares were more common than not. Every night he’d return to another battlefield; whether or not he’d been there didn’t matter, his memories twisting all the same as his nights filled with the dense sound of blasters firing all around him, his teammates’ shouts echoing through the comms. He’d wake up in a sweat, springing from his bed, his right hand shifting to his hip to grasp his bayar-

Oh. Right. He didn’t have it anymore. Didn’t _need_ it anymore, he tried to assure himself. Honestly, he should feel safer away from the battles, but now he knew of the dangers that existed in space. Without his weapon, his armour, his Lion, his team…he felt more exposed than ever.

Lance became jumpy over sudden noises and reflexes honed over months of living in a war, ensuring his team could survive another day, would make appearances at seemingly the most random times. Sitting still had, at some point, almost become unbearable and he found he could no longer vegetate in front of the TV as he had always loved to indulge in during the holidays. Other times, he’d find himself spending hours just staring up at the sky, unable to do anything else as he wondered whether something would come for Earth. _When_ something would come.

Lance’s family grew worried, insisting he was misremembering. Of _course_ their Little Lance hadn’t gone to space to fight in an intergalactic war; that would be absurd! They reminded him of this every chance they got. The more he persisted with the truth, the more they argued back. It was tiring. Why couldn’t they believe him? When he heard hushed whispers of the possibility of him needing a psychologist, he stopped talking about it.

As time went on, believing their suggestions, which were so _rational_ compared to his sci-fi story, became more and more appealing. The temptation grew as his memories became less defined, but there was a longing, an emptiness, a feeling of almost homesickness that would overcome him whenever he indulged in the idea. Yet it made no sense. THIS was his home, not in space with Hunk and-

And…

…

Ugh, whatever. The point was he was already home, so why would he feel such a way whenever he thought of the-… four… five of them? Wait, how many were on the team?

…

This was ridiculous! He couldn’t forget them after spending so long with them! Then why, _why_ couldn’t he recall their names?! He had lost their faces weeks ago, but that wasn’t unusual for Lance, who often couldn’t picture the faces of even his family after too long apart. He never forgot names though. Until now, it seemed. It still didn’t make sense; why would he forget them when they had been so close?

_‘Unless…’_ Lance frowned in thought, an unpleasant ache in his chest. _‘Unless it_ had _been my imagination.’_ He tried to laugh the thought off, but immediately stopped upon hearing the hollow, hysterical sound. Had he really conjured up such a vivid story? Over a year’s worth of fights, of team bonding, of saving people? _'Well,'_ Lance supposed, _'it isn’t exactly_ vivid _anymore.'_ However, he was overcome with such a strong sense of _wrongness_ as he considered it. Maybe the pressure at the Garrison really _had_ gotten to him.

Just over three months after his return, he had a dream. He was sitting in a room, his back hunched as he held his crossed ankles, neck craning as he stared out into the stars around him. He heard quiet footsteps approaching him, then a figure sat at his side. Lance turned to find a pair of eyes, a striking mixture of silver and violet, bearing an uncanny resemblance to the amethysts he’d collected as a child, and a face framed by dark hair which fell across it as they tilted their head to regard him.

“Thinking of home?” Lance found himself nodding instinctively, only to wonder why he did so. Earth had been the farthest thing from his mind.

He opened his mouth to ask why they had come, but found, alarmingly, that their name would not form. His eyes widened in fear as he failed to recall their name and he reached out to them, hoping they could tell him what it was.

He needed to know.

He cried out as his hand slipped through their arm, launching himself at the person as they began to fade, their body evaporating into the air. They couldn’t go, couldn’t _leave_ him!

Lance woke as he fell from his bed, eyes stinging with tears. He could feel the dream slipping from his mind, fading just as- as...

…

‘Just as’ what? Why was he crying?

Lance’s breaths were laboured as his face grew more and more wet, eyes blurring as he struggled to take deeper breaths. He needed help. He needed his family. However, he couldn’t bring himself to call out to his mum. She wouldn’t, _couldn’t_ understand. No, his mind was screaming for... _someone else_ , but for the life of him he couldn’t think who. Who? Who _was it?!_

Lance stood up on shaky legs, twisting on the spot as he desperately looked around his room as if he might find the answers, as if he might find them _there_. They weren’t. He was alone, stumbling as he tried to steady himself, only for a full-body shiver to run through him, stilling his movement as his breath lodged in his throat.

He fell.


	2. To Be Home

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaaaaaaaaaaa~  
> I'm so ridiculously sorry for the long wait!  
> Somehow my plan to update "the day after" ended up becoming 8 months...  
> Anyway, I apologise for the wait, but I finally decided to just post this chapter already, which means that I haven't had it beta-read, knowing that I'll just keep wanting to edit, so please let me know if there are any mistakes.  
> Thanks to LangstyTeen for motivating me to post this!  
> So, without further ado...

  
  
  
  
  


Darkness.

  
  


Thick, inky blackness that went on forever. The depth of it was like nothing ever conceived before; not the kind of hazy darkness that overcomes people when their eyes shut, but a complete and utter void of light. 

Sensations did not exist. It was neither hot nor cold; there was no temperature, no texture. The dark pressed in from all sides, suffocating in its presence, yet there was a certainty that it would always be out of reach. That is if such a place even had a concept of space. Perhaps even time had no place there. The only thing that existed was the lack of light, if that could even be called an existence. Essentially, it was empty. It was oblivion. 

However, if that was the case, then what _was_ he…? 

* * *

Voices swirled around Lance as arms surrounded him, supported him. He loved these voices. They soothed him immediately, lulling him back into the haze he’d found himself in. One sounded beside his ear, and before he knew it, Lance was speaking. 

“Keith…”

“Lance? Hey, you awake now?” Lance steadily blinked open his eyes, only to quickly shut them as they burned at the glare of the light. As he started regaining awareness, he realised he was sitting somewhat upright, his back supported by two arms steadying his sides. With his vision clearing, he tried to turn his head to Keith, but the movement must’ve been too quick as a bout of nausea overcame him. 

“Easy there! You’ve been in the cryo-pod for quite some time. It’ll take a while for your strength to return.” Coran. He must’ve been speaking the truth as Lance could already feel his strength waning. However, even with his head spinning and the world twisting, blurring, he couldn’t help but smile. He fell asleep, safe in the knowledge they’d be there when he’d next wake up. 

In the end, Lance slept for another day and when he came to he set to work devouring Hunk’s space goo delicacies. The team had been quick to fill him in on what had happened. They told him that he’d been close to an exploding building, the blast hurling a large piece of metal into his side, knocking him back into a wall. The collision seemed to have knocked him unconscious, leaving him unable to contact the team for backup, but saving him from experiencing the pain of what was, apparently, quite a severe wound. 

“Would’ve been a mortal one if left any longer!” Coran had kindly chipped in as he tugged at his moustache. 

It turned out that whilst he had been living through two months trapped in his mind, only four days had passed outside of the pod. 

* * *

That evening, Lance found Keith on the bridge, staring out into the blanket of stars surrounding them. He had an odd sense of déjà vu, but shrugged it off and sat beside Keith, for once choosing not to announce his presence. The boy threw a curious glance at Lance, eyebrow raised (no doubt missing Lance’s usual witty remarks), before resuming his stargazing. Lance followed his lead, mapping out his own patterns in the stars above them as the peace of the room enveloped him. 

His memories of their last mission had slowly returned over the course of the day. He remembered how tense the team meeting had been, all of them aware they were about to jump into a planet-wide civil war, and that they were supposed to try and stop it with minimum losses to either side. The mission had turned out to be just as difficult as it had sounded, their objective virtually impossible to accomplish whilst unable to properly engage. 

Lance, still trying to stick to their mission of saving both sides, had immediately focused on rescuing civilians caught in the crossfire. He could remember their ash-strewn faces, the fear in their eyes, and he could recall the moment the explosion occurred. The team had been wrong; he hadn’t immediately lost consciousness, though he could barely recall any pain. Shock had likely spared him that experience. He did remember the panic, though, as his trembling hands had tried and failed to bring his comm back online. He remembered thinking that those might be his last moments. He remembered his last thoughts…

“Hey,” Lance started, eyes still drifting between the distant lights. He felt Keith turn to look at him. 

“Hey. You okay?” Lance opened his mouth, an answer almost spilling out only to stop as he paused to actually consider how he felt. _Was_ he okay? 

“Not too bad, I suppose. Though I guess that’s pretty amazing, considering. No aches or pains to speak of! In fact I probably feel better than before we left for Tsuz- … Zoosena? Su-Soozemon? Arghhh!” Lance groaned, almost hitting Keith as he flung his arms up in frustration. “Susan! Before we went to Susan!” He sent a half-hearted scowl to the side as Keith huffed a laugh at his inability to remember the planet’s name. 

“Tsuzenon?” 

“Shut up.” Lance grumbled, fighting down a grin as he shoved Keith with his shoulder, though not hard enough to erase his unfairly charming smirk. The action was met in kind and soon they were both straining against each other before Lance slumped against Keith’s side, eyes closed as he tried to keep his chuckling quiet. When he’d calmed down, he made no effort to get up, feeling more relaxed than he had in a while and as he sighed he could feel his joints loosening. 

“You tired?” He shook his head, even as his eyes started to droop. His body may have been tired, but Lance’s mind was still buzzing from remembering everything. 

“Nah, just- I don’t know, weary I guess?” He didn’t need to look up to know Keith’s questioning frown was in place. “Not physically, I mean, yeah a little, but more…”

“Emotionally?” Keith offers, to which Lance shrugs an agreement. His emotions from his dream still hung around like phantoms, but his relief was very real. He wasn’t forgetting, he hadn’t made up Voltron, he hadn’t… he hadn’t died. 

“I dreamt in the pod,” he said suddenly, unwilling to fall back into those particular memories. 

“Oh?” Lance sighed as he remembered the reality he’d been trapped in. 

“I dreamt I was back with my family.” 

“You dreamt of home?” Keith asked gently when Lance didn’t elaborate further. Lance once again paused, reconsidering his instinctive response. He looked up at Keith and as their eyes met he finally recalled why the situation had struck a chord with him. The dream. His desperation and loneliness, the fear of all of it being fake came back to him. He opened his mouth to answer before Keith could question him on whatever face he was making. 

“One of them,” he settled on. Keith didn’t question him on his wording, his eyebrow raising the only indicator of his surprise whilst his eyes searched Lance’s face. Seemingly having found his answer, Keith hummed thoughtfully before looking back out into space, a small smile turning the corners of his mouth up. 

Lance had never before considered the idea of having two homes, might not have even thought it to be possible, not really, but now he knew for certain that he would always feel homesick without his family. Either one of them. 

He recalled what he had believed to be his last thoughts and rolled his eyes at his ignorance. 

_“I wish I was back home…”_

Honestly, just where did he think he was? 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And there you go!  
> I'm sorry, it probably wasn't worth the wait, but I do hope you enjoyed the resolution to this ficlet.  
> Let me know what you think in the comments or feel free to hmu on [my Tumblr](https://someonetheelusivefangirl.tumblr.com/) where I'm always up for a chat!  
> I have also started a [British consultancy blog](https://consult-a-brit.tumblr.com/) for people who want to write fics based in Britain or about British characters, and for anyone else who is curious about anything British, so feel free to send in any questions you have!

**Author's Note:**

> *gasp*
> 
> Let me know what you think in the comments or come shout at me on [my Tumblr](https://someonetheelusivefangirl.tumblr.com/)!


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